ANATOLY IVANOV / PROSE / CATEGORIES / PERFORMING ARTS

APPLE’S FOUNDATION SERIES IS YET ANOTHER INSULT TO INTELLIGENCE

CINEMA / PHYSICS / REVIEWS / 2024-07-15

Have you ever put on a sock inside-out? How about “lost 10 kg just by thinking about it”? That’s how Apple’s Foundation’s Black Hole Jump Drive™ feels to someone who understands physics: “black hole” is a spur-of-the moment, unfortunate misnomer of John Archibald Wheeler  + 

HOW TO DE-AUTHORIZE CINEMA REGARDLESS OF COUNTRY

CINEMA / POLITICS / OUTSIDE NEWS / 2024-07-07

Among other things, we probably have just avoided French cinema industry annihilation. Had the far-right RN party secured an absolute majority in the French parliament, their agenda would have limited government funding exclusively to “patriotic films”. Eerily similar to what has already happened to the  + 

CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA, THROUGH A HIPSTER’S LENS

CINEMA / JOURNALISM / PHOTOGRAPHY / REVIEWS / 2024-05-25

“Civil War” is a must-watch, especially for the fellow Americans. Even the normal ones. Not exclusively the A24 investment finance type of Americans with seed money from Guggenheim Partners, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan and SunTrust. I wish my dad would have given me a  + 

DO YOU LIKE TO WATCH OTHERS DIE IN THE SAND DUNES?

CINEMA / POLITICS / RELIGION / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2024-05-22

Dune — the book, the films… especially the latest ones — are about violence as the only virtue. On a real planet with a real war in a real Europe, killing and maiming real people as you read this, dismembering civilians and mercenaries alike in the most horrific ways… People watch  + 

IS IT OK FOR YOUR GIRLFRIEND TO ELBOW-KICK YOU IN THE PLEXUS?

CINEMA / SOCIETY / REVIEWS / 2024-04-01

Have I missed something? Is it now normal for white, post-doc women to elbow-kick their love interest and colleague in the solar plexus? And a black male one at that? In a jaw-dropping scene of a Netflix series viewed worldwide? And the man passively folds in half, choking,  + 

THE CONSTELLATION SERIES IS A CONSTERNATION

CINEMA / EDUCATION / PHYSICS / SOCIETY / REVIEWS / 2024-03-31

Hats off to the colleagues at Haut et Court for pooling in an impressive amount of resources and talent to shoot the “Constellation” series for Apple+. However, the end result turned out as a pseudo sci-fi light-horror semi-drama that toys with quantum mechanics in low Earth orbit  + 

THE SLOW DEATH OF FILM FESTIVALS?

CINEMA / OUTSIDE NEWS / 2023-11-30

The Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival will be reducing the number of programs in its competitions. The National selection will go from 12 to 10 programs, and the International from 14 to 12. The second-largest French film festival, in terms of number of spectators  + 

ART VS LIMITLESS’ MONEY, SEX & POWER… WHO’D WIN?

CINEMA / ECONOMICS / FINANCE / SOCIETY / REVIEWS / 2023-09-18

Fascinating how the film “Limitless” by Neil Burger starring Bradley Cooper paints a dreamy picture of a struggling artist with an external solution to everything — a pill, stolen by the artist — to be used by the artist to pursue: 1) money 2) sex 3) power… and his art?  + 

IF ALEXEI MEDVEDEV REACTIVATES THEIR ACCOUNT, YOU’LL STILL BE FRIENDS

CINEMA / POLITICS / SOCIAL MEDIA / OUTSIDE NEWS / 2023-08-19

When I saw a “person missing” announcement in my Facebook feed, I somehow didn’t quite understand… “What’s going on? How so?” The usual, the so commonly trivial was going on — the death of an interesting person who did so much for Russian culture.  + 

SAM ALTMAN – EVERYBODY THOUGHT: FIRST AI WOULD DO PHYSICAL LABOR

ART THEORY / COMPUTERS / MUSIC / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2023-06-04

Everybody thought: first AI would do physical labor, then some cognitive labor, then the really hard cognitive labor, like programming… And then, last of all, but maybe never, because it’s magical and human… was creativity  + 

ИСКУССТВО КИНО – THE LAST ISSUE TO PRINT

CINEMA / JOURNALISM / ESSAYS / OUTSIDE NEWS / 2023-05-24

Искусство Кино — published since 1931 and thus, together with “Sight & Sound” and “Cahiers du Cinéma” one of the earliest magazines to cover the film industry, art and theory — has printed its last issue. Yes, my work has been featured in it. But  + 

“FOR ALL MANKIND” SEASON 1

CINEMA / REVIEWS / 2022-07-12

Finally got to watch “For All Mankind” season 1… well, Ronald Moore sure is consistent with his regular soap opera vibe. Or rather, alcohol+tobacco opera — the amount of drinking and smoking easily surpasses the amount of RP-1 burning and space flying. It ticks all  + 

SPECIAL OPERATIONS

CINEMA / POLITICS / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2022-03-01

You know what’s “special” about “an operation”? It’s when it CREATES something new. A piece of art: a film, a book, a soundtrack. A scientific discovery. A technological breakthrough. A medical procedure that allows us to walk hours after appendectomy. A business that transforms us  + 

PERSIST AND DO THE WORK… OR GO BACK TO MISSOURI

ART THEORY / CINEMA / LITERATURE / OUTSIDE NEWS / 2021-03-23

“When things get tough with that rewrite, and you’re starting to see this whole dream fall apart… who are the ones that actually stay in for the long haul? Often it’s narcissists. Often it’s people with big egos. It’s people who really think they’re interesting.  + 

CAUSES CHANGE. CULTURES REMAIN.

CINEMA / POLITICS / ESSAYS / 2020-04-21

Thanks to HBO’s Chernobyl, fewer people worldwide will rejoice at the officially low stats of Covid-19 deaths in Russia. Causes change. Cultures remain.  + 

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE AGES?

CINEMA / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2020-02-17

Judging by the popularity of movie / series franchises, humanity is stuck in the middle ages. Swords, magic, religious sects… Marvel’s super-heroes with gems, hammers, bows and arrows; Star Wars / Mandalorian; Harry Potter; Game of Thrones; The Witcher; Lord of the Rings. The futuresque  + 

DEATH ON SCREEN

CINEMA / PSYCHOLOGY / SOCIETY / ESSAYS / 2019-11-29

We view death countless times on screens, daily. People exploding, shot, bleeding-out, run-over, cut to pieces in so many “creative” ways. And yet, how many of us think about the inescapable fact that at some point in the future, possibly very near future, we’ll be  + 

ART IS NOT DEFINED BY ITS MODE OF CONSUMPTION

ART THEORY / CINEMA / PAINTING / ESSAYS / 2019-08-31

People who claim that an art form is defined by its consumption method continue to amaze (aggravate?) me. According to them, next time you buy a painting to hang on your wall, remember that outside the museum, it won’t be a piece of art anymore.  + 

CHERNOBYL? BECAUSE IT’S CHEAPER.

CINEMA / ECONOMICS / ENVIRONMENT / REVIEWS / 2019-06-11

“The emergency shutdown system at Chernobyl had a fatal flaw. At 01:23:40, Akimov engages AZ-5, or SCRAM. The fully withdrawn control rods begin moving back into the reactor. These rods are made of boron, which reduces reactivity… but not the tips. The tips are made  + 

MONEY = ENERGY… FOLLOW THE MONEY TO GET TO THE ENERGY

ART THEORY / CINEMA / ECONOMICS / PHYSICS / ESSAYS / 2019-01-29

Energy is what constitutes and organizes matter (and antimatter ? ). Prana is an Earth-local, Vedic special interpretation of it. Money is an Earth-local, economic interpretation of it. Follow the money and you’ll follow the energy that constitutes and organizes matter. If you really want  + 

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